In which the Frog Fad has way too much fun.
Chicken Moon
"I never touched the chickens!" Sirius hissed, threading his fingers through the chain-link fence. "You have to believe me, I didn't snap at a single one! They've all got deep-fried feathers for brains—can't look at anything with four legs without flapping about squawking like a bunch of Ministry bureaucrats."
"I heard that, Mr. Black," Percy cut in, miffed, but his tone still official and haughtily refined as ever. "And I don't appreciate it one bit. We at the Ministry work very hard to ensure the safety, security, and quality of life for Britain's wizarding community, and frankly, sir, we bust our backsides doing it." He straightened, throwing back his head to inhale the uppity stars. "Why, I've only just managed to resolve this pesky issue of cauldron thickness standards, no thanks to serial ninnies like yourself who have absolutely no respect for—"
"Shut it, Weatherby," snapped Fred.
"Put a sock in it, Fudge Fan," added George.
"I will not," Percy huffed, ruffling his feathers. "First of all, you're sorely out of place telling me to shut it, Fred. You run an amateur joke shop—I'm a government official."
Fred sniggered. "Been transferred to a new department, have you? Sunrise management?"
George snickered.
Percy ignored them. "Second of all, my name is not Weatherby."
"Featherby, then," George muttered under his breath.
Fred sniggered again.
Percy strutted indignantly toward the chain-link fence. "And furthermore, thanks to you two miscreants, I have neither socks nor a proper mouth to put them in!"
The twins busted up.
"Aw, poor Poultry," crooned Fred.
Percy leered at them, his beady chicken eyes glaring malevolently in the shadow of the moon. He scratched an aggravated claw in the dirt. "You had both better get your juvenile prankster bums in gear and find the antidote."
"Or you'll what?" George taunted. "Peck us to death?"
"Or I'll… I'll…" Percy floundered. "I'll tell Mum."
"Oh no you won't," said Fred. "Keep talking like that and we'll put a rubber band on your beak and tell mum and dad you kept nipping George's fingers."
"And that we simply had to take measures," George put in, grinning. "You naughty rooster, you."
Percy just stared at them for a moment, dumbstruck, and then jerked around to go strutting off in the other direction, muttering to himself, "Outrage! My own kin… utter indecency… if I had my wand…" He disappeared into the chicken coop.
"Off to get friendly with the ladies, is he?"
Fred sniggered. "Would do him good to get around some chicks other than that hound-faced Gretchen Twilliver."
George screwed up his face. "Don't know what Featherby sees in her," he scoffed. "She's a real bitch, she is."
Sirius cleared his throat.
"Not that there's anything wrong with dogs," George amended hurriedly.
"Glad to hear it," Sirius growled. "Now are you letting me out or not?"
Fred just shrugged, shoving his hands into his robe pockets. "Dad charmed the pen."
"So I've noticed," Sirius muttered dryly. "Use the counter-spell."
"Don't know it," said George.
"Why don't you just climb out?"
"A flawed suggestion, unfortunately." Sirius hooked a finger beneath the dog chain encircling his neck, tugging it into the moonlight for the twins to see.
George nodded in understanding. "Fixed to the ground with some curse or other, I'll bet."
"Yes," Sirius replied, flatly.
"Hmm." Fred thought for a moment. A long moment. The sun came up. The sun went back down. It rained. It stopped. Flowers sprouted up. Flowers wilted. Birds chirped. A Muggle shot the birds. The grass turned brown. Leaves fell from the trees. It started to snow. It stopped. The snow melted. Looking bored, George checked his watch.
"You know, Sirius," said Fred, after a time, "that muzzle's not quite the right size for your conk."
George guffawed. Sirius didn't find it at all funny, having misplaced his sense of humor somewhere in the piles of wet leaves and half-melted snow. "Can it," he snapped. "One of you boys, give me your wand."
Fred and George immediately stopped their identical sniggering to exchange suspicious looks.
"And why should we do that?" George replied, crossing his arms.
"So I can magic myself out of the dog collar, George," Sirius told him irritably. He extended a hand, but George didn't move—probably because he thought Sirius was becoming in a dog collar, and was just too busy relishing the moment.
"What's wrong with you two? I need wand! Fred, slip yours through the fence, I'll have it back to you in half a moment."
Fred didn't budge. But the reason for that was unclear. Definitely not because Fred was admiring the dog collar. Sirius had known ever since that chance meeting in the basement of Honeydukes last July that Fred wasn't into dog collars. Nor was he into macaroni-filled trousers. But that was another story altogether, and one that Sirius just didn't feel like reliving at the moment.
Sirius glanced from Fred to George and back again, starting to get a tad bit on the annoyed aside. "Boys…"
"Shut up, Black," Fred hissed suddenly. The twins both drew their wands on him, and Sirius recoiled a step, warily.
"Fred… George, what are you doing?"
"I told you to shut it," Fred snapped. "You're not going anywhere, you dirty Animagus, at least not right away."
"Wha—"
George shocked him with a sudden burst of electric gold energy from the tip of his wand, and Sirius was struck by the decidedly unusual sensation that he was being smothered in a canister of Every Flavor Beans. "Keep quiet. No more warnings."
Sirius staggered back, disoriented by the Bean hex and all the little nibblets of color swimming around in his vision. He managed to stagger right back into the water bowl, wedging his boot stuck in the dish. He scrambled to grab hold of the fence behind him—and therefore preserve his balance—but slipped and fell arse-first with a splash into a fairly deep mud puddle.
Curses. Now his undershorts would be riding up all night.
"Nice work, George. Make him change."
Sirius glanced up quickly, his eyes flicking between the twins. Make him change? Change into what? He didn't have a change of robes with him. And unlike some people Sirius knew, he didn't pack around a spare set of undershorts wherever he went. He supposed that meant they were providing him with a change? Mother of Merlin, whose? There was no way Fred or George wore his size—was there? Sirius hastily looked the other way.
Was this something the Weasleys did on a regular basis? Lend underwear? Sirius made a face. He had no problem with the Weasleys, really, he didn't. It was just that he had a phobia for community underwear, that was all. It was an honest-to-God condition—his psychiatrist had diagnosed it as severe boxebriefum disorder—probably one of the residual effects of his traumatic experience in Azkaban. And of the time when he was five years old and had that… incident… with his mother's leopard-print lingerie. To this day, he still woke up in cold sweats from the nightmares, and would have to feverishly check himself over for black lace at least four times before he could even think about sleeping again.
Though he supposed it wasn't all bad. He was actually delighted to have an excuse to wake Remus up, asking to be checked over for black lace. Moony was, of course, always more than happy to oblige.
Anyway, the point was, Sirius Black had a medical condition. He had a prescription for it and everything. The last time he was in London, he had even taken the precaution of getting a medical alert tag for his wrist—right next to the one that warned about his allergies to penicillin and Dementor kisses.
Talk about peace of mind.
George prodded him threateningly, jarring him out of that peace of mind. "Back into a dog, Black. Now."
Sirius stood his ground—or rather, sat his puddle—and didn't transform. "Why?"
George scowled, raising his wand to curse him again. "Why you little—"
"Hold off a sec, George," Fred interrupted, holding up a hand to block George's wand. "The mutt wants to know why, then let's tell him." He eyed Sirius for a moment, a crooked grin plastered across his face. "Might be funny."
It took less than three seconds for Fred's grin to echo itself on George's face. "Might be. Okay, let's tell him."
The twins leaned conspiratorially close to the chain-link fence, as if afraid Percy the chicken might hear them. "We're running off to join the Muggle circus. And you," Fred poked Sirius through the fence with his wand, "are going to be our show dog."
Now, many things contributed to what Sirius said next. First off, he had absolutely no idea what a circus was, much less any inkling of what a show dog would be expected to do in one. On top of that, the continued discomfort of sitting in a mud puddle was starting to distract him.
All in all, "What?" summed up his state of mind quite nicely.
"Yeah, swing on trapezes and walk tightrope, that sort of thing," George put in. "You can do it all with magic and the Muggles won't know any better. We'll be rich."
Sirius looked from one Weasley to the next, both grinning mischievously in the shadowy starlight, and looking like a couple of redhead carnies. He made a mental note to advise Molly that she check her twin sons into the jar of mixed nuts at St. Mungo's.
"I don't think so," he said, unable to quash a hint of laughter at the ridiculousness of the situation.
"We think so," Fred and George said together.
"Uh, no," Sirius told them, a bit more seriously. Because Sirius, naturally, was a very serious fellow. He hated it when people didn't take him seriously. Serious was his middle name. Or no, wait, that was his first name. Only spelled different.
"Uh, yes," said Fred. "'Cuz if you don't—"
"We'll turn you in to Fudge," finished George, twisting his face up into a smurf. But only because the narrator was too much of a butterfingers to properly type the word 'smirk.' The effect was really quite comical.
Fred turned and slugged him. "No, you great stupid prat! We agreed we'd turn him into chicken feed for Percy, not Fudge!"
Smurf-face slugged him back. "Don't be thick! Not fudge, Fudge! As in Minister Fudge!"
"That's what I said, you dolt! Fudge! But we agreed to turn him into chicken feed!"
"No we didn't, what the bloody hell would Fudge want with chicken feed?"
"Wha—chicken feed? Who said anything about Fudge wanting chicken feed?"
"You did!"
"No I didn't!"
"Did."
"You did!"
"Didn't!"
"Did!"
"STOP!" Sirius roared.
"SHUT UP!" the twins roared back in unison.
"I'm not going to stand here listening to you two have a row about Fudge and chicken feed," Sirius snarled.
"You're sitting," muttered George.
"And the chicken feed's for Percy," Fred interjected sourly.
George rounded on him. "You just said it was for Fudge!"
"Enough!" Sirius barked. The twins flinched and fell obediently silent. "Now," he continued, eying them coldly. "This fic is getting way out of hand. One of you better have a damn good explanation for why this is so ridiculous."
"Oh. That." Fred shrugged. "You're dreaming."
And with that, Sirius woke with a start, his heart hammering away madly in his ribcage. He put a clammy hand to his face and exhaled in shaky relief that the horrible fic had only been a delirious figment of his subconscious. What Freud would have to say about it, he was better off not knowing, but all that really mattered was that it was over. He had been spared the unnecessary lunacy of fanfiction for the remainder of the evening.
"Hey," someone hissed. "Hey! Sirius!"
Sirius twisted his head in the direction of the voice.
Fred stepped up to the chain-link fence, his face creased with shadows in the calm night air. "What were you doing chasing Mum's chickens?"
Sirius felt his jaw drop in horrified disbelief.
"Yeah, what's the matter with you?" added George, stepping up to the fence as well. "She's been in the kitchen blubbering away for hours!"
Sirius couldn't answer. He only stared at the twins, aghast, while Percy the chicken pecked dirt in the moonlight.
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Characters and concepts of
Harry Potter property of JK Rowling, not Frog Fad.